


Kurt Hummel on understudying, Book of Mormon, and his years at NYADA

by iaminarage



Series: Make Me Happy 'verse [5]
Category: Glee
Genre: Gen, So don't read it if you haven't read through chapter 22 of Make Me Happy, This is a side fic for the Kurtbastian fanfic Make Me Happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 23:02:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2558993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iaminarage/pseuds/iaminarage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt Hummel on understudying, Book of Mormon, and his years at NYADA (A blog entry by waitinginthewings.com)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kurt Hummel on understudying, Book of Mormon, and his years at NYADA

**Kurt Hummel on understudying, Book of Mormon, and his years at NYADA (A blog entry by waitinginthewings.com):**

 So, like many of you, we here at Waiting In The Wings fell in love with Kurt Hummel as soon as we saw him play Gabe in New World Stages production of Next To Normal. We were thrilled when he finally got to make his Broadway debut in Book of Mormon! As an unreasonable amount of luck would have it, our parents were in town last month and we purchased advanced tickets to take them to Book of Mormon (yes, at FULL PRICE, I know) and who happened to be making his debut as Elder Price that afternoon? None other than Kurt Hummel! I’m pretty sure they heard our fangirl squees on the moon. And let us tell you, he was _fantastic_. We got the chance to sit down with him last week and talk about his career, his friends, and understudying a lead role on Broadway.

 **So let’s jump right in! What was it like finding out you were about to go on as Elder Price for the first time?**  
Oh my god. You have no idea. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Jake [Bennet who plays Elder Price in the Broadway cast] was out of town so his standby, Clay [Masters] was going on for the week. So Saturday at about 10am, I get woken up by this phone call—don’t judge, I sleep late— from Clay, who sounded terrible, telling me I was going on. And at first I had no idea what he even meant. He had to explain it to me. At which point I promptly freaked out. Like full on terror. I feel like that’s not what I’m supposed to say? I’m probably supposed to say that I was totally prepared and ready and eager to go on. And I was! Just underneath the terror. Luckily I have great friends and family and they convinced me that I was going to be fine.

The actual performance part was such a whirlwind. There’s so much that goes into that role that, between remembering what I needed to keep track of and trying to enjoy the experience, it really just flew by. All of my cast members were really supportive, telling me I was doing a great job during the show and making sure to keep track of me. And then a bunch of my friends surprised me by coming to the evening show, which was really awesome.

 **Sounds like a crazy day! So what do you, as an understudy, do to prepare for moments like this?**  
Live in a constant state of panic? No, just kidding. I’m lucky enough that this isn’t my first understudy gig. It would be so much more intimidating if it were. My first professional job was on the Wicked tour and I understudied Boq along with being in the ensemble. I was the first cover for that role and, just because of the nature of touring, I went on often enough so the process of understudying isn’t new. But obviously nothing really compares to going on as Elder Price.

As an understudy, we do get rehearsals to make sure we know our stuff and we are the ones who do most of the rehearsing with any new cast members, so that helps keep up our knowledge of what we’re doing. I also make a habit of singing through all of Elder Price’s songs a couple of times a week. But, no matter what you do to prepare as an understudy, you’ll never have the same comfort level as you do when you do a role 8 times a week. Of course that can be a good thing.

 **So how was touring with Wicked?**  
I mean, it was basically a dream come true. Wicked was my favorite musical as a kid. I was totally obsessed with Elphaba, like a lot of kids who feel different are, I think. It could have been the tour of anything and it would have been a dream come true. I was only a few months out of school and I had my equity card and was a working professional actor with a steady income, so the fact that it was Wicked was really a cherry on top. It’s definitely one of those shows that—well, you get older, different shows speak to you, you fall in love with a different style of theatre, but you never really grow out of the shows that mattered the most to you as a kid. Even though I’ve done the show hundreds of times, there are still times when I hear it and it reminds me of certain things in high school.

That being said, I was not cut out for touring. I had friends on the tour who loved touring and kept coming back to it, but I think I’d have to be offered something really special to decide to tour again. I’m just not the right kind of person, I think. I get very tired. And, no matter how much I love any cast, seeing them literally 24/7 is hard on me. It’s hard to have the same group of people as your entire work life, your entire social life, and what passes for your entire home life. And I really like having my stuff in drawers and closets instead of suitcases. So I definitely wouldn’t trade my cast for the world or that experience for the world, because I learned so much about myself as a person and as an actor, and we did have some really great times. But yeah, it was also really hard.

 **So let’s step back in time a bit. I heard a rumor that you were once a National Show Choir Champion? And that there are a few names in that particular group that we all might know?**  
Oh god, just don’t link to the video. I was so young! But yes, I was in Glee club all through high school. And, as difficult as high school was, and as bad as we sometimes were at taking care of each other, I still consider that group to be my family. They’ve all done their best to either catch me on tour or come out here and see me even though a lot of them are really busy. Two of them are actually still my roommates, if you can believe it!

As far as names you might know, yeah there are a few. Rachel Berry [currently playing Mary Elizabeth in Perks of Being A Wallflower: the Musical], for one, was definitely the star of Glee club. We were both best friends and huge competitors back then. We went to NYADA together and she’s still one of my roommates and best friends. Mercedes Jones, who I think most people have heard of these days, was another of my best friends. It’s still entirely freaky to hear her voice coming out of my radio. Awesome, but freaky. If anyone has seen the San Francisco Ballet, my friend Mike Chang is a principal dancer out there and, even to this day, remains one of the best dancers I’ve ever worked with. And obviously Blaine Anderson is kind of the talk of young Hollywood these days, never mind the fact that the internet is in love with him. One of these days, they’ll get to see him sing and it’ll probably break their brains.

(Ed Note: Sorry Kurt! We couldn't help looking you guys up on youtube and sharing some videos. Here are the McKinley High School New Directions: [2010 Midwest Show Choir Championships](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgre3St2-RI), [2011 Western Ohio Show Choir Sectionals- ABC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUEAl-wR88g), [2012 National Show Choir Championships- Paradise by the Dashboard Light](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4pzxlbeaqI))

 **That’s pretty ridiculous. So we’ve talked about high school, we’ve talked about the tour of Wicked, we’ve talked about going on as Elder Price. I just have one more question. If you had to choose, what is the first moment where you absolutely knew you were going to be a professional actor and make it to Broadway?  
** Oh goodness, sometimes I’m still not sure it’s really happened. I think there were a lot of moments where I started to know—Rachel and I certainly spent most of our friendship saying we were going to make it together. But the one moment when I really knew? I guess it would have to be at NYADA. I got to play a lot of really great roles in college and, for someone who was kind of overlooked in high school, it was such an insane confidence boost.

The biggest moment, I think, was playing Tom in Glass Menagerie. Hadley Martin directed and she was already gaining a reputation by that time, so the fact that she wanted me to star in her show was really validating. At NYADA, seniority definitely matters in casting, so you have to really blow people away to get a leading role as a junior, and I’d never actually had a leading role before. At the time, I was much more confident in my singing and my ability to put on a show than I was in my acting, so I really didn’t expect my first big part to be in a straight play. Being entrusted with a role like Tom that requires so much subtlety and nuance was amazing and really terrifying.

The moment I knew was when the reviews came in for the show. They were just reviews by the school paper, but the NYADA Sentinel is not known for pulling its punches. When the review completely raved about my performance, that was the moment. I just sat in front of my computer in my college apartment and knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that I was going to prove them all wrong, that I was going to make it. I kind of wanted to print them out and mail them to anyone who ever doubted what I could do so that they would know that I was so much more than they imagined I could be.

 **That sounds pretty awesome! We can’t wait to see everything you’re going to accomplish! Thank you so much for talking to us!**  
Anytime, seriously. Thank you so much for wanting to talk to me!


End file.
